In Faulkner, this local speech is a mixture of �Southern American and Negro dialogue with all the folklore from Virginia to Louisiana, Florida to Texas� (Brown 2). Faulkner�s dialect is effective both as a literary device and as a link between the American English language and American culture and history, specifically in the Southeast.
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The South is probably the most linguistically diversified part of the nation. Blacks and whites from Atlanta to Charleston to Nashville speak a different form of standard English in a different version of the Southern accent. Part of this linguistic diversity is reflected in the way that the Southern aristocracy can �shift not only vocabulary and pronunciation, but even grammar, according to the audience� ((1)McDavid 219). This technique is very much alive in Faulkner�s work.
For example, in The Reivers, the upper-class grandfather character Boss is an educated man of high social standing in the community. Yet, when he is in the company of only his grandson Lucius, as part of a lecture, he says �the safe things ain�t always the best things� ((2)Faulkner 117).
Throughout the book, Boss�s speech moves from the formal to the informal, largely depending on the intimacy he feels with the person or persons to whom he is speaking. Such a case illustrates that Faulkner is well aware of the prestige norms that exist in Southern speech, and he takes advantage of this knowledge.
As Feagin points out, in the Southeast, the way in which �nonstandard English is employed demonstrates a symbol of intimacy and local loyalty, as well as a gauge of the level of integration into a close-knit network� (Feagin 222).
Faulkner�s characters reveal a tendency to speak in a slang-like or non-prescriptive grammar when they converse with other characters that they know well, often apparent in the form of jokes and metaphorical language. Similarly to the aristocratic speaker, the less educated Southern speaker often attempts to improve his or her speech when in a formal setting.
McDavid asserts that the common way to do so is by �using bigger words and longer sentences, sometimes resulting in the ridiculous� ((2)McDavid 265). A good example of such in Faulkner occurs in As I Lay Dying when Anse, a rural, farming man, attempts to sound eloquent at a time of utmost solemnity. During a funeral speech, Anse states the following:
The somebody you was young with and you growed old in her and she growed old in you, seeing the old coming on and it was the one somebody you could hear say it don�t matter and know it was the truth outen the hard world and all a man�s grief and trials ((1)Faulkner 511).